API Overview

The API specification of the FDC3 standard support the following goals:

• Create a consistent developer interface for working with FDC3
• Standardize interfaces for reference implementations
• Standardize interfaces between desktop agents

The role of FDC3 API specification is to establish a baseline interface for interoperability between applications. Because FDC3 is largely an agreement between existing platforms and applications - standards should be optimized for ease of adoption rather than functional completeness. Functionality absent from a FDC3 specification is in no way a commentary on its importance.

The focus of the FDC3 Standard Working Group has been to create a small but consistent API, the following docs go through the components and API's in detail.

Key Elements

• window.fdc3 global object and fdc3Ready event, for accessing FDC3 operations globally
• DesktopAgent interface, which exposes FDC3 operations
• Channel interface, for subscribing to specific context channels
• Listener interface, which allows unsubscribing intent or context listeners

Usage

There are two main ways FDC3 can be used from web applications:

1. Direct Usage

Simply rely on the global object being made available by your desktop agent, and address the API directly:

function sendData() {
  window.fdc3.broadcast({
    type: 'fdc3.instrument',
    id: { ticker: 'AAPL' }
  })
}

if (window.fdc3) {
  sendData();
} else {
  window.addEventListener("fdc3Ready", sendData);
}

2. NPM Wrapper

The @finos/fdc3 npm package provides a wrapper around FDC3, allowing you to use it with ES6 import syntax:

import * as fdc3 from '@finos/fdc3'

await fdc3.raiseIntent('ViewAnalysis', {
    type: 'fdc3.instrument',
    id: { ticker: 'AAPL' }
})

It also includes a helper function you can use to wait for FDC3 to become available:

import { fdc3Ready, addIntentListener } from '@finos/fdc3'

await fdc3Ready();

const listener = addIntentListener('ViewAnalysis', instrument => {
  // handle intent
})

See also

• fdc3Ready() Function